How to Verify Authorship (rel=author) in Google SERP
- Wednesday, July 06, 2011
Few weeks back Google announced support of the authorship markup, enabling content sites to help identify their authors on the site and across the web. Authors are given a very prominent treatment on search results.
To identify the author of an article, Google checks for a connection between the content page (such as an article), an author page, and a Google Profile.
- A link from your blog post or article to your author page using rel="author"
- A link from your author page to your Google profile page using rel="me"
- A link from your Google profile page to your author page using rel="me"
A rel="author" from Blog post to Author page
A content page can be any piece of content with an author: a news article, blog post, short story. Give a link from the blog post or the article page to the author page, which tells Google about the author of the posts.
<a rel="author" href="https://www.joydeepdeb.com/">Joydeep Deb</a>A rel="me" from Author page to Google profile page
An author page is a page about a specific author, on the same domain as the content page. Link from the author page to your Google profile page, this will tell Google that the author of that page is the same person as the one in the Google profile.
We can define by using a <link> tag inside the <head> tag to the base URL of your Google profile page.
<link rel="me" href="https://plus.google.com/112499444311758326794" />Or we can use <a rel="me" href="#"></a> tag on any anchor tag on the page.
<a rel="me" href="https://plus.google.com/112499444311758326794">Joydeep</a>Google profile to your author page
When you link your Google Profile to your author pages (or to sites you write for), you're telling Google that all of these pages represent you. If you’re content appears in search results, your photo (including a link to your Google Profile) can appear next to it.
Update your Google profile with links to your author pages (To add links to your profile, click Edit profile, then click the Links box on the right of the page and add the links you want.).
Check it on Google Rich Snippet Testing Tool
To see if you’ve done everything correctly, run a sample blog post or article through the rich snippet testing tool. Google Rich Snippet Testing Tool.
And that is how we implement the rel="author" in Google SERP. Let me know if it works for you and if you’ve found other ways to implement it.
Joydeep Deb is a Senior Digital Marketer and Project Manager with strong experience in Digital Marketing, Lead Generation, Online Brand Management, Marketing Campaigns, Project Management, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), PPC, eMail Marketing, Web Analytics, Web Technologies, Web Design and Development.
With an MBA in Marketing. IIM Calcutta Alumini. Lives in Bangalore, Karnataka - India.